Letter values
Both alphabet tables side by side — and the letters where they disagree.
Where the letter values are used: name numerology, Chaldean numerology, Expression, Soul Urge, Personality, number 1, number 2, number 3, number 4, number 5, number 6, number 7, number 8 and number 9.
How the second table is used on a whole name: Chaldean numerology.
| Value | Pythagorean | Chaldean |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | A J S | A I J Q Y |
| 2 | B K T | B K R |
| 3 | C L U | C G L S |
| 4 | D M V | D M T |
| 5 | E N W | E H N X |
| 6 | F O X | U V W |
| 7 | G P Y | O Z |
| 8 | H Q Z | F P |
| 9 | I R | not used |
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Get your numbers worked out
One email with the full chart explained, the two systems that disagree, and which number does what.
Pythagorean: order
A is 1, B is 2, and so on to I at 9. Then it starts again: J is 1, R is 9, S is 1, Z is 8. Nothing more complicated than counting through the alphabet in blocks of nine, which is why this is the version almost everyone uses.
Chaldean: sound
The Chaldean table groups letters by the vibration attributed to their sound rather than their place in the alphabet — which is why A, I, J, Q and Y all share the value 1 despite being scattered through the alphabet.
The 9 is missing entirely. In this system it was held to be sacred and kept out of the letter values, though it can still appear as the total of a name. That single difference means a name reducing to 9 in Chaldean got there by a very different route.
Which to use
Pythagorean is the Western default and the easier of the two to check by hand. Chaldean is older and treated as more precise by its practitioners, at the cost of a table nobody can memorise. Neither is verifiable, so consistency matters more than the choice — running one name through both and picking the nicer answer is the one approach guaranteed to be meaningless.
Every letter, both values
Look up any letter. Only 10 of the 26 letters — A, B, C, D, E, J, K, L, M, N — carry the same number in both systems.
| Letter | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pythagorean | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Chaldean | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 8 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| Letter | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pythagorean | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| Chaldean | 5 | 7 | 8 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 5 | 1 | 7 |
Which numbers English letters produce most
Weighting each Pythagorean value by how often its letters appear in English text shows why some numbers turn up in names far more than others: E and N make 5 the most common digit, while 7 — G, P and Y — is the rarest.
Letters with a special role in a name
Beyond the totals, numerologists single out a few letters. The cornerstone is the first letter of the first name, read as how you approach new situations. The capstone is the last letter of the first name, read as how you finish what you start. The first vowel is taken as a glimpse of your inner nature, a short version of the Soul Urge number.
The Y and W question
Y counts as a vowel when it sounds like one — in Lynn or Mary — and as a consonant when it does not, as in Yolanda. Some practitioners apply the same test to W in names like Llewellyn. It matters because the vowels make the Soul Urge and the consonants the Personality, so a single Y can move a number between the two.